ME's talent drain in oil and gas sector

The majority of oil and gas executives in the Middle East anticipate a looming talent shortage in all skill categories, the most pressing of which is in operations (81 percent), said a report.

The majority of oil and gas executives in the Middle East anticipate a looming talent shortage in all skill categories, the most pressing of which is in operations (81 percent), said a report. Experts[2] focused on the oil and gas sector to gauge the talent trends in the growing industry in a report entitled the Talent Edge 2020: Redrafting talent strategies for the uneven recovery by Deloitte, a leading professional services firm.

The Deloitte report is based on the responses of 376 executives, 34 percent of which from Europe, Middle East and Africa, outlining key talent-related challenges across industries. Findings indicate that critical talent shortages, retention programmes, and the growing reliance on discovering global talent are top concerns for oil and gas executives. “We are witnessing a growing trend of oil and gas companies expanding into global and new markets as a top strategic priority. Moreover, talent management is no longer confined to the company’s country of operation; rather the search has gone global, to find skilled and critical talent,” said Ghassan Turqieh, Human Capital consulting partner at Deloitte in the Middle East.

Surveyed oil and gas executives ranked finding the right people globally as their top talent priority, citing managing human capital (38 percent) and expanding into global and new markets (38 percent) as their companies’ most important strategic concerns. Executives find that a looming talent shortage in all skill categories exists in many fields, which include operations (81 percent), IT (61 percent), risk and regulatory (62 percent), and research and development (60 percent), the report said.

Surveyed oil and gas executives worry more about retention than leaders in other sectors, even though they see their retention programmes as equally strong.